When people talk of the benefits of meditation, they often cite compassion, equanimity and loving kindness. These three are part of what the Indians called the Brahmavihara and the Chinese called the four universals.The remaining one is Empathetic Joy.
Contemporary talk is often about cultivating compassion or cultivating loving kindness. Yet there’s an error in understanding these four qualities as personal qualities to cultivate and retain.
Why is that a mistaken view?
Because it’s part of a bigger mistake: meditation is a form of self improvement.
The corrective lies within the original term Brahmavihara.
Brahma is the Creator. Vihara means dwelling.
What’s meant by dwelling is we can, as it were, be within the house of compassion, within the house of loving kindness but it’s not our personal possession. It’s not our house.
Thinking of the four dwellings as personal qualities encloses that which should be open. We misunderstand compassion as kindness or concern. We misunderstand equanimity as serenity, when it means non discrimination. And we, tellingly, miss out empathetic joy entirely, because it doesn’t so easily fit a model of self cultivation. And, actually, mudita just means joy. Adding ‘empathetic’ gives it an attitudinal gloss, making it easier to squeeze it into the model.
There’s also another point though.
The self improvement model is just the latest iteration of an instrumental perspective which has bedevilled Buddhism from the start.
The contrasting perspective is that the primary dwelling place of these virtues is in zazen.
We can see the Brahmavihara as four aspects of zazen. By throwing our self and our ideas of gain and loss to one side and just wholeheartedly sitting, we can dwell within these four virtues. Together with all beings.